969 Fabulous Prizes?

I spent a lot of time today that would have been spent writing a blog post writing an essay about who would win in a fight between Mario ans Sonic. Because it needs to be said… also someone asked Thomas in the cast questions thread on the facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/263417838175/ Be sure to get your questions in now, even though I don’t answer them in the order I get them. : D

Now I’d like to take a moment to speak to those of you who own a Nintendo 3DS. Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land is available in the eshop. I realize that it’s a very old game, but it needs to be said that it is one of the best Mario games ever made. It was the game that cememnted Wario as a recurring cast member because of its excellence. On top of that it has one of the best cheats in any game ever. Hopefully it survived the translation into downloadable form. What you do is hold A and B on the pause screen and press Select 16 times. It makes a cursor appear in the stat bar that you can move around to change the values of all the things listed. In addition to that, if you exit out of the cheat while the cursor is on Wario’s face he changes to the next hat style in a cycle. You can do the cheat as many times as you want in any level. It was the best thing ever when I was a kid. XD

My copy of Wario Land still works, so I didn’t rebuy it. I guess the battery doesn’t take the same kind of pounding that Pokemon games do. It’s an older game than them, I think, but I couldn’t tell you by how much. It’s also far superior to the games that preceded it. Mario Land is just terrible, and the only good thing to come out of it was the plot that created Daisy as a cast member, and that’s arguable. (also the pop jet in Mario Kart 7 is based on the Soda Jet from Mario Land.) Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins is a huge step up by comparison, but it’s not as tight a mario game as one would hope. It’s good, but not great. Wario’s introduction is the best thing to come from it, although his games have had some missteps over the years… Ultimately though he’s been a fun addition to the mythos.

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Mario Land 1 is an amazing feat of miniaturisation. A bonsai Mario game! Gunpei Yokoi really pushed the boat out on what the Gameboy could do without extra hardware – as you’d expect from the creator of the Gameboy, I guess :)

You could argue that yeah, it’s maybe not the greatest Mario game. That some things don’t work exactly as you’d expect: Turtles leave bombs and you can’t kick their shells around. But every change is made for a reason, whether that’s understanding the limits of what you could show on the Gameboy screen, memory limits, and you know what? It’s still pretty damn good fun. Some of the changes are actually even helpful: Collecting coins with the Power Ball isn’t just an arbitrary change to the gameplay mechanics, it’s actually fun in it’s own right.

I can still clear the thing in an hour or two, tops, and then go onto the hard mode.

Mario Land 2 and Wario Land went on to do impressive things with the hardware, but Mario Land was, for me, the game that defined the Gameboy. (Well, OK, the Other game, but Tetris should really go without saying :) )

Despite Nina’s horniness I think they are a long way off from roller coasters.. I mean, Thomas and Carol knew each other for years, Nina and Ed met days ago. And where does that leave Jo? D: I mean, lets be honest, she hangs out with John a lot but… with the kind of guy he’s supposed to portray, I can’t see Jo going for him. The shy one going after the obsessive player? Noooohoho

In this day and age, knowing each other for years before expressing romantic interest is kind of the abnormal situation! There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but asking a nice person out after a couple of days is perfectly acceptable too.

As for Jolene, I think she’s got her own issues that need to be hammered out – and those probably won’t get fixed by pairing her off immediately. Especially if it’s just for the sake of having every cast member put smooches on somebody. :p I think Jo can, at least for now, satisfactorily go unshipped. She and Ed are awfully sweet together, though.

Because I have too much time on my hands, I measured Nina in the last panel,(her feet roughly reaching the top of the first paragraph below the title) I got 4’7″ for Ed’s height. Nina’s 6’3″, (75 inches) with half her height being 3’1sih” (37.5 inches, Ed’s chest and the black line on the bottom panel) Now take half of 37.5 (18.75) and plunk it on top, you roughly get high enough to Nina’s chest, AKA Ed’s height. (56.25 inches/by 12 = 4.6875 rounded for sake of it, 4’7″)

Joining in on the how tall…er, short…is Ed really question. Okay, extreme nerd time for a moment: using some different maths based on average distances on humans, I get that with Nina being the before stated 75″ tall, Ed could be somewhere around 4’6″ to 4’9″…ish.

Then again, if webcomic time does not adhere to “human” laws of space and dimension…hmmm.